Mao's 'cultural revolution' ripples out across the whole country and affects everybody. It begins as an emperor's reassertion of power, but ends in complete disaster. Ten in every classroom and every bedroom by the end of it, isn't it? Tens of millions of people die in the Great Leap Forward. And then we go on to see factional fighting between red guard violence when that is over.
Journalist Tania Branigan has spent years covering China and is Foreign Leader writer for the Guardian. Her new book, Red Memory: Living, Remembering and Forgetting China’s Cultural Revolution, explores the traumatic legacy of the era helmed by China's Chairman Mao throughout the 1960s and 1970s, which left a devastating mark on the psyche of future generations. Joining Branigan in conversation is journalist, author and former China Editor for BBC News, Carrie Gracie.
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